In 2021, YouTube was the third most accessed destination for podcasts. In 2022, it tied Spotify as the platform used most among weekly podcast listeners. Now across three studies in 2023 and 2024, YouTube has pulled away from the pack and leads as the most used podcast audience platform in the U.S.

For the twelfth edition of the Podcast Download series, Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights retained MARU/Matchbox to conduct an in-depth study of 603 weekly podcast consumers from April 19-24, 2024. Two studies are conducted annually. The Spring 2024 Report highlights trends from prior studies and examines topics such as co-listening, platform preference, content trends, perceptions of brand safety and content appropriateness, and more.

A sure sign of brand marketers leaning into podcasts is the increase in brand lift studies conducted by Nielsen. Since 2017, Nielsen has conducted an astonishing 1,300+ podcast brand lift studies. They recently released a series of norms and key insights on their database of podcast brand effect work.

Last week, Edison Research released their annual Infinite Dial study. When Edison Research started the Infinite Dial Study in 1998, the goal was to understand how Americans use emerging forms of audio and new media. or marketers, the most compelling aspect of the study highlighted podcast audiences.